Laura Knight (1877–1970) was an English Realist painter who documented life and culture in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century.
Educated at a time when studying life-drawing was the preserve of male artists, Knight railed against social restrictions of the day and established her own life studio. She was a consummate documentarist and her studies of the ballet as well as her government-commissioned depictions of women’s wartime labour during the First World War are some of the this artist’s most enduring works.
The first female artist to be elected a full Royal Academician, and with a career that spanned seven decades, Knight was one of the most important artists of her day. Today her work features in public collections across the UK and around the world, including Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museums, London.

Alice Strickland is a curator for the National Trust in London and the South East. Her doctorate considered British women war artists of the Second World War and she has been awarded a Paul Mellon research grant for a publication on women war artists of the First World War. Her other publications include Learning from the Masters (2013) and Ethel Gabain, Evelyn Gibbs and Evelyn Dunbar: Three Approaches to Professional Art Practice in Interwar Britain (2008).

The Modern Women Artists Series
The Modern Women Artists series of collectable books reveals an alternative history of art, telling the story of important female artists whose art might otherwise be overlooked, overshadowed or forgotten. Working across a range of disciplines and artistic styles in the first half of the twentieth century, all of the women included in this series were modern. Read together, these books begin to redress the untold history of modern art.

Tickets: £3 without the book, £10.50 with the book. Book tickets at Eventbrite.

This event will be BSL interpreted.

In partnership with Eiderdown Books
with Lottery funding from Arts Council England